episodes are remembered, indicating that all the political prejudice and rancor known elsewhere was especially in evidence on this highway, which owed its existence and future to the machinations of politicians.
But the greatest blessing of the Cumberland Road was the splendid era of growth which it did its share toward hastening. Its best friends could see in its decline and decay only evidences of unhappiest fortune, while in reality the great road had done its noble work and was to be superseded by better things which owed to it their coming. Historic roads there had been, before this great highway of America was built, but none in all the past had been the means of supplanting themselves by greater and more efficient means of communication. The far-famed Appian Way witnessed many triumphal processions of consuls and proconsuls, but it never was the means of bringing into existence something to take its place in a new and more progressive era. It helped to create no free empire at its extremity, and they who traversed it in so much pride and power would find it today nothing but a ponderous memorial
